


Regrets and Consequences

by SinMachine420



Series: The Lazaret [1]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Death, Emjet is back! This time with #sad, Gore, Major Character Undeath, Male Pronouns for Asra (The Arcana), Psychological Trauma, Spoilers, Spoilers for Book XIII: Death (The Arcana), The Lazaret (The Arcana), Trauma, but then gore snuck up on me, it was supposed to just be angst, named apprentice, otherwise go nuts, she/her pronouns for apprentice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 08:59:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17598251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinMachine420/pseuds/SinMachine420
Summary: This is some gorey angst fellas. Starring Asra and my apprentice, Emjet.Inspired by landing getting Asra on the Lazaret in Heart Hunter





	Regrets and Consequences

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning: eye trauma, burning, rot, probably a few more tbh, all around the concept of physical distress to a human body.

The Lazaret can never again be described as a beautiful place. Not after this. What was once a haven for fishermen and sailors now festers like an open wound, vomiting smoke thick as pitch into an already suffocated sky. Red brick buildings stuffed with agony and despair line ashy beaches. Intensivists and nurses scurry about like rats, unaware or simply uninterested in the magician pacing the black sands.

Asra mutters to himself as he scours the shore, his eyes darting around as he searches for any sign of _her_. He followed her here, like a thin thread that was unmistakably Emjet looped around buildings, strewn across streets, and dragging through unforgiving waves, eventually leading him here. So where is she?

He walks the beach for hours, painting circles round the circumference of the island. Why not just check inside? Surely if she’s here, she’d be there? Regardless, Asra continues to walk, bare feet stained and aching. He walks and walks, searching for the person he loves, doesn’t deserve to love, someone he ran away from. He walks, and then he finds her.

She looks different from when he last saw her. Her back is to him as she sits at the edge of the water, watching the horizon, maybe even waiting for him...? Yet even from this angle he can see how thin she’s become, once carefully toned muscle replaced with scratched skin clinging to uncertain shoulders. Her hair has been shorn off, the work patchy and uneven. And yet, draped across her back is fine drakrian silk, spun with gold and interwoven with violent blues and purples. She looks the part of a long buried empress, yet here she sits, watching the ocean’s turmoil.

Asra’s heart catches in his throat as he stares, unbelieving and unwilling to accept. Here she is, here she _finally_ is, after a year of running and then returning he has _found_ his beloved. Sick, yes. But she’s here. His feet move towards her before his mind does, and then he’s stumbling over his own steps in a desperate dash towards her, towards Emjet, _his_ Emjet.

“Emjet, there you are! I’ve been looking _everywhere_ for you… Please let’s get out of here, I can help you.”

He can feel tears of relief fall freely down his face before they begin to chill as she turns her head towards him.

Her face… By the gods her _face_. Gaunt, skin stretched over bone so dramatically that it has begun to tear, leaving bloodless wounds crisscrossing the expanse. Her lips are pulled back over too long teeth, teeth that fall from their setting in the bone into a pool of blood in her gaping jaw. _No wonder she’s not bleeding. She’s keeping her blood in her mouth._ Asra can only watch in frozen horror as she reaches for him, staring at him with eyes that are so red, red as fire and hate and regret and love and _sickness_. Those eyes that stare and blame until they pop, thick viscera pouring from empty sockets.

Emjet wraps her grip around his wrist and her touch is like paper, and through it Asra can feel something like hundreds of beetles running under her skin, thousands of legs that press into his arm as her grip only tightens. Still he only stands there, mouth dry and eyes wide. Then, terribly, she smiles, her lips cracking up through her face until her jaw is completely separate from the rest of her face. The weight of bone on putrefying tendons pulls it down, stretching gray muscle until it tears with a wet _snap_ , dropping into black sand.

_Asra._

Her voice doesn’t come from her ruined face, it comes from behind her, somehow moving in a deadly whisper.

_Can you help me?_

The movement of her voice makes itself known as it’s source crawls up her leg, a greedy flame licking against skin that can’t handle any more strain. Her skin boils under its heat, climbing higher with every word.

_Please, Asra, it hurts…  Why did you leave, Asra? Why would you kill me?_

“No no no, I didn’t kill you, I didn’t- I was so afraid and I ran, but you- you weren’t supposed to die, please, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean for this to happen, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...”

She laughs, a harsh and broken sound that shreds against his skin. The fire is nearly all consuming, burning away expensive clothes and fusing melted skin to blackened bone. 

 _You cannot lie to me, sweet Asra. You’ve never been sorry a day in your life. Were you sorry when you told me I was stupid to stay? Were you sorry when you told me you were leaving me to die? Were you sorry when you left in the middle of the night while I slept, afraid of what I would say? Were you sorry when you traveled the world for an entire year? Were you sorry when you found out you were right?_  

It wasn’t until the inferno overtook her face that Asra started screaming.

* * *

 

The mage jolts awake in his bed, white hair plastered to his forehead with cold sweat as his heart pounds weakly in his chest. A light weight drops down onto his shoulders, coiling around him until a snake’s head is in view. _Dreams?_ Faust tilts her head inquisitively as she rolls against his neck in an effort to ease his tension.

Asra scratches under her chin, earning a little snake tongue flick, “Yes, Faust, just dreams. Bad ones.”

She winds down his arm to stretch against the sleeping person beside him. _Of before?_

Asra’s eyes rest on his bed partner, hair short but growing back, blonde like it was before, stark against dark skin smooth as honey. Her chest moves with each breath she takes and he finds himself transfixed with the simple motion of it. “Yes, of before… But that’s over now. Emjet’s back now. It’s okay.”

_Back to normal!_

His breath catches in his chest, forcing the idea away. Normal doesn’t exist any more, it can’t, he can’t risk that, not when she screams when he tries to tell her, not when she can’t even remember the language she was born speaking. With a silent dismissal his familiar slithers out of the bed, climbing the post up to the rafters where she sleeps.

Asra, once an apprentice and now a teacher, settles back into the bed, wincing against sweat dampened sheets. He continues to watch her breathe, watch the way her eyelids twitch when she dreams, how her lips seem to stutter in minute attempts to speak. It doesn’t matter if it’s never like it was, he thinks. All that matters is that she’s here.

She’s alive.


End file.
